Foynes Line

Are we not lucky they sold them. Pity the Foynes line was not sold it woukd have the country half a billion between the refurbishment of the line and the attempt o er the next 10-20 years to justify the initial spend.

If that money had been put to a justifiable rIl project grand. There is and never will be a justification to have rail allaround west Cork just like there is no reason for the Foynes line

There is a fundamental difference. When the West Cork lines (and many others) were closed in the 50s and 60s, the Dail gave CIE the authority to dispose of the land and the stations. While the Foynes line stopped carrying pasengers in 1963 and freight in 2000, the line was never closed; simply mothballed. Selling off adjacent properties such as stations may have appeared reasonable especially if they were occupied residentially, but doing so without retaining unambiguous rights to fully operate and maintain the line suggests a lack of competence.

no, we aren't lucky because it has meant a small few areas which could justify rail now either can't get it or it's very difficult.
actually, the west cork main line would have been quite viable today had it survived and it could have as it was modernised right before closure, the small branches are different.
the only issue was the city railway.
the foynes line rebuilding has been justified, it's happening, no amount of cribbing about it or ranting about ryan who had no say over it will change it, it's happening, it's being rebuilt and it will be open for traffic.
all 10 t ports must be connected by rail, rightly so, there will be no more big road expansions and megga road projects for HGVS.

They sold the house, not the line, there's the difference.

I'd also say that had we retained the rights of way, and even ripped up the tracks if the cost of rail was too high, that the possibility of running buses on those rights of way would be a huge plus right now.

What case was put forward though?

It appears to be a strange one. No customers in place either now or down the track excuse the pun.

not really that strange, the EU now require all main/core ports to be rail connected as mentioned a few times already in the thread.

foynes it seems is a core port so it has to be rail connected.

no it's a requirement.

None of our railway lines make a profit - the benefits are already recognised, hence operational and capital subisidy.

(Luas is operationally profitable but would not cover the costs of its capital if borrowed on its own books)

There reaches a point when you can't justify the cost regardless of the benefits. West Cork should absolutely not have closed (along with a reasonable number of other lines); but the Donegal narrow gauge lines were screwed as soon as the roads were tarmacced.

Other lines were misbegotten from day one, Claremorris-Collooney for instance being a relief scheme never intended to be a proper railway and not built to even the standards of the day let alone anything useful now.

No rail will make money in Ireland however this project will cost 300 million and probably a couple of million to maintain every year. It will NEVER be used for passenger rail, as well even if it was intended to it would cost another 100 million or it will have to divert out of its way to access Limerick city center.

It unlikely that any more than a half dozen trains a week will use the line even if its every used for freight. It was refurbished because there was no planning requirements therefore it was shovel ready.

However it makes no sense, there was no business case for it. We hear bout the Ten-T requirement but youcan make a case for a derogation.

For Instance will we upgrade core railway lines to 160km/hour. Maybe Cork to Dublin and onto Belfast but that will be it if it happens which it may not. Will all the other ports get rail lines. Unlikely

The money could have bern spend better on other rail or public transport projects

there are a couple of answers to this question.
answer 1 is that because they were built originally as commercial ventures they aren't or at least, weren't saw as public infrastructure but infrastructure that in the whole couldn't be got rid of so had to be tolerated and thus subsidized to the bare minimum.
we seem to be getting away from this slowly but surely starting in the mid to late 2000s but we have a way to go.
answer 2 is that profit is just an excuse to either not reopen lines, build new lines etc.
actually our report that suggested lines closures and rambled about profitibility which was never achievable came first, the beaching report came a bit later on.
now, while i agree generally with your point there were certainly some lines which were beyond any use.
branches like balaghadreen, mountmellik couldn't survive long term.
others like tramore which was profitable when closed were certainly questionable but how long that would have survived otherwise who knows.
the north west issue is difficult because of the abomination of partition and when the UTA closed their part of anything cross border there were disconnected stubs left but perhapse we could have done a bit better in trying to retain something into the north west but how we could have done it god knows.
agree about navan and the main line section of west cork and i would add cavan to that list as well.

actually you can't make any case for a derogation here as derogations can only be made if it is simply impossible to do something.

also any derogations we do get or have got in relation to anything have a high cost involved, you get nothing for nothing with the EU thankfully.

all the other core ports are rail connected, waterford, rosslare more or less is, dublin is, cork will be via marino point.

Dronehawk’s latest update, a comprehensive look at the track relaying progress.

No idea and your guess is as good as mine. I was wondering about loading and unloading facilities generally. Perhaps that might be part of the all-encompassing Phase 2.

That's the difference. This isn't a "transport project" in the way that Luas, metrolink, national roads, the cork line level crossings, the Midleton line doubling etc etc are - which went through the relevant hoops (e.g. cost benefit analysis, planning, DEPR scrutiny etc etc as appropriate). This one slipped through the net. SFPC received a grant 10 years ago and used it to produce a report on the of reopening the Foynes line (€10m was the estimated cost istr) as part of their overall 2041 vision thing. IE subsequently completed a design report. The report was put on a shelf to be forgotten. Ryan realised a couple of years ago that that he would reach the end of his term as Transport Minister with precious little actual rail construction (apart from the CART project elements that dropped like mana from the EU post covid sky) and nothing whatsoever on rail freight to show for his time in office. Doing anything worthwhile would have required a 5 year lead time at least to comply with planning, PSC guidelines etc, so instead this nonsensical project got resurrected as it is basically just an "internal IE engineering job" relaying track and could slip past all the controls, check and balances that would and should have sunk it.

As I said previously, and nobody has produced a shred of evidence to the contrary, no business case, no cost benefit analysis, no subvention calculations, no freight projection were produced, nothing, much less anything like a business plan indicating where the freight or customers are going to come from. All of which you would need before even thinking about things like the loading and unload facilities because the facilities to be provided relate directly to the freight to be carried, especially in the case of bulk freight. And furthermore, no clear idea of who is going to promote and sell the offering - a huge and essential undertaking in itself. In other words, this is very likely to be a complete and utter waste of money, undertaken to satisfy the whim of a self-opinionated imperious Minister.

The Ten-T requirement is nothing but a red herring.